About half of large businesses in South Africa are satisfied with the pace of the ongoing government-led structural reforms, with about two-thirds expecting increasing positive results to continue impacting their businesses positively, according to an interactive reform tracker.
Stuart Theobald, executive chair of Krutham, said the reform tracker, established by Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA) and supported by analysis from Krutham, noted positive sentiments among business leaders regarding the pace of structural reforms.
“We introduced what will be a standard survey of BLSA members around the tracker. We asked many questions, but two I thought would be helpful to highlight. The first is: ‘What has the impact of reforms over the past 12 months been for your business, for your ability to do business?’
“I think it is encouraging to see that 43% report that it has been somewhat positive and 4% highly positive. A quarter say the impact has been balanced, and, of course, some are experiencing some negative consequences of reforms.”
Theobald was speaking at this week’s quarterly update of the BLSA Reform Tracker. The online interactive tool was launched last year to provide real-time updates on the progress being made in the government’s structural reforms, including those outlined in Operation Vulindlela.
The forward-looking view, I think, is also very encouraging.
— Stuart Theobald, executive chair of Krutham
“The forward-looking view, I think, is also very encouraging. So we asked: ‘What do you expect the impact of reforms to be on your ability to do business over the next 12 months?’ And here, you can see 45% saying it will be somewhat positive and 18% saying it will be highly positive.”
Having climbed 2.3% between September and December 2025, the overall score has risen 23.7% from its starting point in March 2024.
Economic reforms carry the largest weight, representing 70% of the reforms tracked. “We saw particular progress in the last quarter in freight logistics and reforms around spatial inequality. Momentum has slowed down… but the rate of change momentum does actually slow down purely as a mathematical consequence of how many reforms are meeting completion.”
Progress despite setbacks
Of the 245 reforms tracked since the beginning of the tracker, 34 have been completely finished — and in the last quarter. According to BLSA, 23 large member businesses responded to the survey.
“There are some reforms that have moved in the wrong direction, so we’ve actually seen regression where reforms have made progress, and there’s a reversal of that progress. We are highlighting electricity reforms as the most significant of those, particularly around the [Eskom] unbundling strategy.”
Theobald said 192 of the reforms were still in progress, as the tracker showed the rate of change of different scores quarter by quarter. In the latest quarter, the most reform progress was made in the economic category, with some progress in the governance and criminal justice categories.
“When a reform is halted, it can be for good or bad reasons. Inevitably, the world changes, and what seemed like a good idea as a reform proposal at one point might, over time, seem less of a good idea, and reforms can be halted.
“That is often positive when it’s the right call, given that the world has changed. But it can also be negative where reforms face serious political blockage and effectively fall by the wayside and are abandoned.”
BLSA CEO Busi Mavuso said the reform tracker was a critical tool to measure delivery on commitments that the government has made to improve the network industries, service delivery, and criminal justice interventions.
“It is difficult for the business community to thrive in an environment where progress is measured by speeches rather than outcomes. On an every-second-month basis, we meet with the president to monitor the progress.”
She said the reform tracker was important as business needed certainty to invest and operate in South Africa because the market is premised on certainty, its absence is a hindrance. She said it was encouraging that 21 months of tracking showed that reform is gaining momentum.
It is difficult for the business community to thrive in an environment where progress is measured by speeches rather than outcomes.
— Busi Mavuso, BLSA CEO
Hannah Marais, Southern Africa chief economist at Deloitte, said the timing of the government’s structural reforms was crucial to grow the economy by 3% or more, as the constraints to growth in electricity and logistics have endured for well over a decade.
“What we see with Operational Vulindlela is that momentum. We were talking about structural constraints to growth 15 years ago. It was really difficult to see that political will and that commitment, and I think with… phase 1 and phase 2, sitting in the presidency, there’s really a lot that has been done.”
While the decision that Eskom will not unbundle its transmission assets into the Transmission System Operator is regarded as a reversal of a reform, South Africa’s removal from the Financial Action Task Force greylist last year is acknowledged as a completed reform.
Business Times
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